• Van Nistelrooy was No 2 to Ten Hag then interim manager
• Amorim meets United executives at training ground

Ruud van Nistelrooy has left his role as assistant coach after the arrival of Rúben Amorim at Manchester United. The Dutchman oversaw three wins and a draw during a spell in interim charge after the sacking of Erik ten Hag but will not be part of the new era at Old Trafford.

Van Nistelrooy, a former United striker, returned to the club in the summer to work under Ten Hag, having left Old Trafford 18 years ago. He had suggested a willingness to stay on under Amorim and see out the remaining 18 months of his deal. United also confirmed the exit of his fellow coaches René Hake, Jelle ten Rouwelaar and Pieter Morel.

State’s holding in former Royal Bank of Scotland down to 11.4%, without need for Jeremy Hunt’s planned £3bn sale

Sometime around spring next year, HM Treasury should finally sell its last share in NatWest, or the Royal Bank of Scotland, as it was. The process will only have taken 17 years. If that feels like an age, it is a shorter timespan than seemed likely only 12 months ago.

At the end of the last year, the government’s stake – 84.9% after the two-stage nationalisation by the last Labour administration in 2008-09 – was still 38%. Now it is down to 11.4% after the latest “directed buy-back”, in which the bank bought shares from the Treasury for cancellation – in this case £1bn-worth.

Confirmation follows progress at talks over government support for switch to less polluting technology

The owners of British Steel are to keep the blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe site running past Christmas amid talks over government support for a switch to less polluting technology.

The government is thought to be considering aid for British Steel at the same level or even higher than the £500m pledged to Tata Steel, which closed its two blast furnaces in Port Talbot in September . However, no decisions on the shape of a package have been made.

• Shortstop held by police over incident on Sunday
• Player facing separate charges over sexual abuse claims

Police in the Dominican Republic have arrested Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco after an altercation involving firearms.

ESPN reported that authorities held Franco and an unnamed woman for questioning on Monday after an incident in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Sunday “in which guns were drawn.”

The answer to today’s Inca-nundrum

Earlier today I set you a puzzle about a ‘khipu’, the Incan method of recording numbers with knots on string that features in Paddington in Peru. Here it is again with the answer.

Incans used khipus to record dates, taxes and measurements, among other things. Knowledge of how khipus represented numbers was lost after the Spanish conquest, until a high school maths teacher in Brooklyn worked it out in 1912. Today’s puzzle asked you you to repeat his decipherment.

Our cat expert guides you through everything you need to keep your feline friends purrfectly happy – and the kit that’s not worth your money

Cats’ stock may have fallen some way since being worshipped in ancient Egypt, but the domesticated kind still live pretty rarefied lives. Cat kit is big business, despite reassuringly few cats being trusted with credit cards of their own.

But what do you actually need to keep your pet feline safe and happy? I live with three of the furry little simpletons, Hamilton, Brando and Ripley, so have hopefully gleaned some insights. I’ve outlined some must-buys below, along with a few things I think can be safely avoided.

The high drama at Chelmsford could have been avoided if a new system for halting races was in place

Racing came perilously close to a calamity on Saturday evening, and had events unfolded differently after nine runners set off for the most valuable race of the night at Chelmsford, this column might well have opened with the words “Racing is still in shock …” instead.

The start of the Essex track’s 8.30 race was entirely unremarkable, but what happened next was, in the words of a racecourse spokesperson, “unprecedented”. The tractor used to pull the starting stalls off the track failed, and the gate was still in the middle of the home straight as the runners began to turn for home with their riders starting to stoke them up for the final run to the line.

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While Football Daily only has two hands and needs both of them to type this drivel every day, we can’t help but feel the pair of them would have been snapped or bitten off if we’d offered Liverpool fans a five-point lead at the top after 11 games before a ball had been kicked in this season’s Premier League. While the denizens of Anfield had no particular reason to believe Arne Slot wouldn’t do a decent job as successor to Jürgen Klopp, the managerial shoes into which he was stepping were undeniably huge. And if they needed proof that follicly-challenged Dutchmen are capable of making a pig’s ear of managing an elite English club in their first big job outside of the Netherlands, well … let’s just say they didn’t have to travel too far to seek it out.

The craziest game I have ever been involved in and I can’t imagine it ever being topped … there can’t have been a greater comeback in the history of football – four goals in the last five minutes to win the game” – Yarm manager Stephen Jackson calms down just enough to reflect on his side’s wild 6-5 win against Sunderland West End who, wait for it, were 5-2 up after 90 minutes.

Readers respond to the government’s proposals to reform the Mental Health Act and end injustice in the treatment of severe mental illness

I read your editorial on the proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act with interest ( 6 November ). The act serves as the balancing point between the state’s negative duty not to interfere with individual liberty without good reason and its positive duties to prevent harm to vulnerable people and the wider public. The criteria for detention represent the threshold at which both of those duties are triggered: detention under the MHA is also a gateway to rights to proactive care and support both during and after detention. We may argue about whether the existing criteria for detention strike the right balance between the state’s positive and negative duties, but it is at least the same balance for everyone.

The draft bill sets a much higher threshold for detention unless a person has committed a crime, and while this will lead to fewer people suffering the trauma and indignity of being detained, it will also mean fewer people receiving the positive support and protection of the state – that is unless they commit a crime. Even leaving aside the unexplored equalities implications of such a perverse incentive, it can surely be neither less restrictive of the individual nor more caring of the state to force people into the criminal justice system in order to receive the help they need.
Michael Chalmers
Associate director of mental health law, North London NHS foundation trust